


in these dreams it's always you

by unveils



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Ghost Jason, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-14
Updated: 2018-07-29
Packaged: 2019-06-10 12:33:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15291615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unveils/pseuds/unveils
Summary: Jason shouldn’t be here. Not here, in Tim’s bedroom, not here, in Tim’s life, and not here, in the real world, when he’s supposed to be dead.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> first chaptered fic! i'm hoping to update next week and the next to wrap it up, but we'll see -- it's all mostly finished, in any case. this is an au i've been wanting to write for a while, so i'm excited (nervous?) to finally be getting to it. all characterizations of tim (and jason) rely on preboot canon vs n52/rebirth because batfam comics died in 2011 and that's just the truth of it.
> 
> title from straw house, straw dog by richard siken.

The funeral is on a Tuesday, and it rains.

Tim spends the days leading up to it sneaking change from the crystal key bowl in the foyer, enough for a subway ticket. He plans this like he plans everything these days-- keeps a set of instructions in the back of his head repeated twice daily (once at lunch, once at dinner), but only inside the confines of his head. It’ll work, he knows. His plans always do, so long as they aren’t said out loud. Secrets carry power, enough to carry over into actuality. 

He plans and he waits with his hands in his pockets clasping fists full of coins so they don’t make a sound when Mrs. Mac falls asleep and he pulls up his bedroom window. Day rain in Gotham is suffocating and dry, but Tim planned for that, too.  

They don’t let him past the church gates. He doesn’t ask, just -- lingers, phantom-thin and silent at the end of the block, watching the paparazzi snap like vultures with their cameras at Bruce’s feet. There’s a name for the feeling that hollows his chest but he doesn’t say it because names have power like secrets have power and Tim knows to be careful about these things. 

The service isn’t long -- twenty-three minutes -- and Tim spends it staring at the sky so hard something in him feels like it’s coming loose. The rain is wrong for Jason, but the funeral is wrong, too. It’s all wrong for Jason, for Robin, but it’s right for Bruce, for Alfred, for Dick and for Barbara. Tim has no place in this story, only a background role and a will to hold it together even when the weather gets tough, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t know things. 

Jason would’ve wanted sunshine. If not the rush of the first wind by nightfall, then a sky free of clouds and the sun on your cheeks.

Sun. Jason used to burn far too easily for how much he enjoyed it, freckles spattered up and down his arms, across his smile. Tim knows this too -- has four pictures in a too-stuffed shoebox in the back of his closet that showcase just that. A scrapbook of all these lives lived, Jason in the center of it, that means the world to him and nothing to Jason. Nothing to Bruce, to Alfred, to Dick or to Barbara. 

This funeral isn’t for him. 

That doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt. 

 

\--

 

It rains all the way home. 

Tim takes the still-in-tact piece of tape from where he’d left it above his door and folds it until it’s small enough to be tucked underneath a pile of trash that’s already in the wastebasket beneath his desk. Mrs. Mac slept through the trip to the Bowery, both ways. His parents are in South America hunting down antiques and Bruce Wayne is probably suiting up early in the cave beneath his mansion.

Tim is alone. 

There’s a plan that’s barely formed in his head but that’s all it is. Half-hearted mantras to repeat until they find an end in the way his fingers keep brushing over dog-eared ends of photographs. Batman needs a Robin. But who? Where?

Jason is dead, Dick is god knows where, and Tim is alone. 

There are moments in the dark where he thinks things could’ve been different if Jason knew Tim like Tim knows Jason. It’s petulant and it’s selfish and it’s a hope that belongs entirely to the way Tim feels in these moments, in the dark, folding the shoebox cover back over top his photographs and wishing, maybe--

Jason is dead, and Tim is alone. Those are the facts. 

It doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt. 

Tim settles back on his knees and lets himself breathe where it’s safe to do so. In this closet, Batman and Robin have a secret, and secrets hold power but Tim can keep this one if he never says it out loud. 

When he emerges again, it’s dark out, but it’s not raining. 

When he emerges again, there’s a boy in his bed. 

Tim feels himself backing into the closet door behind him, folding defensively in front of it, but the boy is -- 

“So you’re him, huh?” Jason’s voice is bright and strong. Not Robin, not quite, but familiar enough still that it sends a shiver through Tim right to his core. “You’re the stalker that’s been following me and B around for weeks.”

He shouldn’t be here, not here, in Tim’s bedroom, not here, in Tim’s life, and not here, in the real world, when he’s dead. Tim opens his mouth to speak, but Jason’s there first, lifting Tim’s camera from where it’s sat in his lap. “You’re not bad, you know. Lotta people that’d pay the big bucks for this kinda stuff.” Jason laughs, freckles and sunlight for days. “But what do I know about art? Or  _ money? _ ”

Tim grounds himself with all the weight in his chest and takes a step forward. “You’re alive.” He says it out loud, clear and cutting as it can be -- it’s not a question, so he doesn’t phrase it like once. “You’re  _ alive _ . You have to tell him-- he needs to know, so he can-- so you can go back to being--” 

If Jason is alive, Batman doesn’t need another Robin.

But Jason-- he looks like he’s tasted something sour, expression darkening in an instant. Tim knows what wanting to say something and keeping yourself from the weight of it looks like, but he didn’t know that Jason did, too -- never thought he’d see the look on Robin’s face. 

“What’s wrong?” Tim whispers. 

But he knows, already knows the second Jason lifts himself from Tim’s bed. Each step closer is a shade darker. Bruises pool into the hollows beneath Jason’s eyes, his arms, abrasions ripping into the freckles of his skin until there’s nothing left of him but something black and empty, otherworldly in its horror.

_ Is this what he did to you? _ Tim doesn’t say, doesn’t ask, already knows. He holds onto the gasp in his throat, keeps it clutched tightly where it squirms like an animal, afraid and overwhelming. “You’re not--” Tim can’t make himself say it, because then it would be true.

“Alive?” Jason speaks it for him, always far more brave. His smile stitches itself back together in front of Tim’s eyes, horror for function, making Robin whole again. “Not so much. Sorry to burst your bubble, kid.”  

“I’m not a kid,” Tim hears himself saying, an instinctual response born of the way nobody seems to take him seriously, even when he’s the only one in the house who knows anything. “I’m thirteen.” 

That makes Jason laugh, and Tim feels -- powerful for it. 

“Alright, my bad.” There’s a bit of silence as Jason finds his ground, and Tim waits. 

Tim waits, and Jason fiddles with the settings on the camera he’s still holding. Anyone else and Tim’s expression would be through the roof, but it’s not  _ anyone else _ . 

“He couldn’t see me. B, I mean.” 

Tim waits.

“All he does is stand at the case like some fucking weirdo.” He laughs again, but this time it’s hollow and ringing, ugly like --

_ Is this what he did to you?  _

“I go right through him, when I try to touch him. Like some horror movie. Alfred, too. I tried to wait it out, but there’s only so much time you can kill when you don’t sleep, you know?” Jason continues on, like Tim’s not even there, like he’s still working on convincing himself. “I tried to figure it out, too. I thought there might be something in the library, or on the computer, but he’s not--” 

Jason’s brow furrows, fingers tightening white to the knuckle. “He’s not looking.”

Tim wants to argue in Bruce’s defense, but there’s nothing he can say that will ring true. This isn’t his story, but it still hurts. He’s silent for a long moment before raising his eyes to Jason’s own, hard and sure. “I see you.” 

Jason is silent, too, returning his stare for all it’s worth. Then, he smiles. “I guess you do.” 

Tim thinks he’d do anything to help Batman and Robin. Maybe that’s why Jason is here. Maybe he can help both of them. 

Maybe. 

He holds his hand out. “I’m Tim Drake. Pleased to meet you.” 

 

\--

 

For what it’s worth, he does try to help. Over and over, he tries. 

Over and over, he fails. 

If there exists a book with any reasonable credibility on how to bring a ghost back to life inside city limits, Tim hasn’t found it. The internet is even less useful, sending him spiraling into Wikipedia clickholes that dead end on ritual-themed money schemes out to rob the desperate and grieving. There’s too much at stake to approach Bruce or Dick in private and plead his case -- they’d send him back to his parents, and who knows where he’d end up then. Some rehab center for rich kids? With a relative in the countryside?

Maybe it was a chance worth taking before Jason showed up, but now-- he can’t afford to waste time like that, not when summer break is ending so soon. 

There’s also the matter of it not being true in the first place. Tim knows not to trust anything if he can’t trust what’s inside his own head, but on a more logical note, he also knows that grief does things to people. It’s doing things to Bruce and to Dick, and maybe, it could be doing things to him. 

He doesn’t let himself dwell on that one. He can’t afford to waste time, least of all on the possibility of delusion. 

Jason is  _ real _ , and he’s here -- he does things that Tim couldn’t think to make up, to even imagine. He laughs like the boy Tim never actually knew, but always thought he could. Not Robin, but Jason Todd. Born on the streets and raised into a superhero. 

“You’re shitting me. You really hadn’t been on the subway before the funeral? Not even once?” Jason’s talking around a mouthful of the dinner Tim snuck up to him-- if it’s a few hours cold, it doesn’t seem to bother him. 

Tim’s not even sure he needs to eat, really. But he doesn’t ask. 

He only shakes his head, knees drawn up to his chest while Jason spreads out across his bed. “There’s a family car that our maid drives. My parents have one, too, but they usually get it shipped out to them when they’re on long business trips like this. I, uh -- I have a skateboard?” 

Jason snorts, mouth full of food and completely manners-free. If Tim’s lips quirk into a smile, he tries his best not to hide it behind a cough.  

That’s something else Jason can’t believe. His  _ manners _ , held in exasperated finger quotes. 

(“I can’t believe you grew up like this.”

“Like what?” 

“Like some porcelain doll, taught how to keep quiet and polite until you’re spoken to. I didn’t know people like you actually existed.” 

“For what it’s worth, I didn’t think people like  _ you _ existed, either.”)

Tim’s never been so happy to spend so much time inside his house. He tells Jason that he’s free to come and go as he likes, but for all the time Tim is around and awake, he seems happy enough to stay. They learn each other, finding an easy groove in the surprising amount that they have in common, and even what they don’t. Jason hovers as Tim researches, going through his things without asking, poking around at family photos, all of Tim’s clothes and Xena memorabilia -- anything he can get his hands on. Tim learns that Jason’s particularly bad about staying in his own space, something he doesn’t even seem to be aware of. He’ll drop a hand on Tim’s shoulder or flick a piece of hair out of his face like it’s nothing, even though it can’t be, not with the way Tim’s heart speeds into overdrive every time. 

“I have to go back to school soon,” Tim tells him, one night when they’re at opposite ends of his bed, Tim at the header and Jason at the footer. 

“Boarding school?” Jason makes a face. Tim nods. 

“What’s it like?” 

Tim tells him. It’s -- what it is is boring, mostly. He spends most of his time out of classes photographing places and people, living on the fringes where it’s easier to look at everything objectively, not get so tangled up in the details. He has friends, but they’re distant -- far too caught up in their own lives to notice anything beyond their immediate bubble of vision. There’s Ives, but they barely see each other anymore now that Tim’s in boarding school. Jason makes another face as he speaks,  but Tim already knew he would. They’re opposites in this -- Jason thinks and lives with his heart, wears it on his sleeve where the whole world can see it. Maybe even more than Dick. It’s the kind of thing Tim always admired. 

When he says that, Jason rolls his eyes. “Right, like I’ve got  _ anything _ Dick doesn’t. Except a goddamn immortal wedgie from the panties he left behind.” 

“Bruce must’ve thought you had something worth keeping around.” 

Jason goes quiet like he does any time Tim mentions Bruce.  There are other things he could mention, like how Jason’s better at throwing his weight around, how his punches hit harder, even if they’re not as quick. There are dozens of small things that separate Jason and Dick as Robin in his head, and then so many larger, more substantial things that separate them as people. Tim wants to tell Jason all of them, if it’d help. 

Instead, he says, “I think we should tell him.” 

Jason looks up. “Tell who what?” 

“Bruce. That you’re -- well, you know. I think… together, we could show him, if you wanted to. Make him believe.” 

Jason scoffs, crossing his arms over his chest. Tim thinks: heart on his sleeve, all the way to his core. “Not until we have a way to bring me back.” 

“He could help,” Tim argues. “He’d want to.”

“Then why isn’t he helping  _ now _ ?” Jason sneers, anger painting his features. It’s a talk they’ve had multiple times over the last couple of days, ending nastier every time. 

If Bruce knew then he would be helping you, Tim thinks.

If  _ you  _ knew how much he’s hurting now that he’s alone, Tim thinks. The news has been reporting Batman as a harsher, more brutal vigilante -- a menace of the night. 

If any of them knew anything, Tim thinks. 

_ Tim  _ knows. 

“Batman needs a Robin, Jason.” It’s a quiet thing, but a sure one. 

There’s silence in the dark for a while, nothing but the sound of his own breathing, and when Tim looks back down at the foot of the bed, Jason is gone, like he was never there at all. 

 

\--

 

The next day, Bruce puts someone in the hospital for sixteen broken bones. There’s a handful of minutes where the news reports that they’re not sure the guy will even make it. Tim counts each breath he takes during each of them.

_ Man or menace? _

Tim has a secret so big it’s dominating the whole of his life but it’s not his to say out loud, so he keeps his silence, buries it deep inside of him where it can’t hurt anyone.  _ It’s what Bruce would do,  _ he tells himself.  _ It’s what Bruce would want. Heroes are strong, they live on hope.  _

It’s what he knows, but more than that he knows: Batman needs a Robin.

What Tim needs is Jason back.

That night Tim wakes to him Jason hovering in his space, shaking his shoulder with a vigor Tim normally reserves for dogs. His hands are cold, and he’s a sick, unrecognizable pale. No sunshine in the way he looks right. 

Tim sits up, alarmed. 

“You have to help him.” Jason says immediately, eyes piercing Tim through with a determination that could only be Robin’s. “You were right, okay? He doesn’t know how to carry it by himself. I don’t think he can.” 

“What can I do?” Tim whispers, only half of the full question he wants to ask. The other half is some semblance of _How?_ _I can’t be enough for this. I’m just--_

“Tell him what you told me. Tell him Batman needs a Robin.”

Tim waits, but Jason doesn’t speak up again. He swallows. “That’s it?” 

Jason fixes him with a hard stare. “That’s it.” 

So Tim does.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You know, I wish--” That nervous energy, paired with the exact moment where Jason’s lips part in thought-- Tim wants to trace it with his fingers, to photograph it, to hold it tight. “I wish I’d met you before.”
> 
> Tim wants to keep it forever, something to put in a box on that shelf in his mind when he needs something to pull him up out of the silence, the feeling of that emptiness on his chest. He doesn’t know how to say that, how to articulate it. Maybe it’s a secret, and maybe it’d lose power. Tim knows about secrets, and so he just says,
> 
> “Yeah, Jason, me too.”

Every kid dreams about being a superhero. 

Tim doesn’t exempt himself from that. 

He can recount an endless number of starless nights in alleyways where the cold was so sharp it felt purifying on the way down his throat, fingers white-knuckled in a grip around his camera as he angled the lenses rapidly, all just to follow around that boy in a cape.

_ Snap. Snap. Snap. _

He’d sit in the shadows and wish so hard it felt like something he could carve into his skin and no one would notice a change, not his dad, not his mom, not Mrs. Mac who looked at him more than either of them combined. 

_ Just this once, turn around.  _

Snap.

_ Just this once,  _ baited breath, trembling fingers.  _ Look at me. _

He never wanted to take Robin from anyone -- never even wanted to  _ be  _ Robin, only to be written into this story that defines his life so limitlessly.

But now he sees Jason when no one else does. Now he can help. Now he can be a superhero.

And now, Jason sees him, too.

 

\-- 

 

The suit doesn’t fit across the shoulders. It’s too wide in the chest and too wide in the legs because Tim’s made himself good for jumping and avoiding where Jason was made good for all kinds of things, namely standing his ground and taking bad guys down with him. 

Tim reasons that it all feels wrong because of this, because the suit doesn’t fit like it should. Like it would, maybe, if this were the right thing to do. The suit he’s wearing was was made for  _ Jason _ \-- or even maybe for Dick-- it’s a spare he found in the back of the cave when Alfred and Dick were debating what to do. He’s good at that. At sneaking. At not being seen.

He hadn’t touched the case, hadn’t -- hadn’t looked at it, not with Dick standing so close and staring so hard, not with Jason right behind him, a ghost of a breath in his ear. He hadn’t looked, even when Dick’s eyebrows furrowed and he rode away in a flurry, even when Alfred stepped forward, pressed a hand to Tim’s shoulder right through Jason’s own.

“Jason’s dead,” Dick says, and Tim doesn’t look at the case or Jason, ghost or not, the boy who no longer belongs inside it. “Jason’s  _ dead _ , and Robin is dead with him. I don’t know who you are or how you know what you do, but it doesn’t matter.”

_ What do I do? How can I know what to say? _ He wants to ask, but he can’t, because now he has another secret to keep, Jason’s, and Tim more than anyone knows that secrets have power. 

Especially, especially, when they’re given to you.

“Alfred--” He tries, fumbles for the words. He makes fists with his hands to keep from grabbing ahold of what’s right in front of his face. “Mr. Pennyworth, I’m sorry, but I don’t know how to make any of you understand.” 

_ He already does,  _ Jason says, warm breath and the ghost of a touch, and for a split moment, Tim watches Alfred blink like maybe he’d heard it too. 

“Come along, Master Timothy.” Alfred says, after a long moment, taking ahold of the suit in Tim’s hands, fingers already moving to smooth over the spaces that aren’t right. “As many years as I have spent tending to this house, I should be able to find a cure for just about anything inside of it.” 

 

\--

 

Bruce Wayne isn’t at all what Tim thought he might be. When you picture a superhero, you build a skeleton of all the good, real things that make them a hero, and then you stuff it in with fluff, or what you might like to imagine. 

Tim pictured Bruce Wayne with Batman’s strength, and Jack Drake’s smile. 

It was a fantasy, maybe, so Tim tries to let himself down easily. Bruce is hurting. Batman needs a Robin. Tim can shelf his own needs, place his fantasy somewhere in the dark where he can reach for it when he needs something for himself, because that’s what  _ heroes  _ do. They’re strong, and they’re silent, and they help other people. Batman taught him that. Jack Drake taught him that.

Bruce Wayne isn’t at all what Tim thought he might be. He’s harsh and he’s cold and he’s wave after wave of rejection. 

_ I don’t need another partner.  _

_ Don’t you know what happened to the last one? _

If standing up to Dick was hard, standing up to Bruce is harder. Even half-covered in the rubble Tim pulls him from, he’s a slab of stone set in his ways. There’s no Alfred here to back him, only Jason’s ghost, who may or may not be real.

But Tim can handle it.

Because that’s what heroes do. 

“Batman needs a Robin, Mr. Wayne.” He clenches his fist. “If not Dick, then someone else.”

Bruce stares straight ahead. “Get in the car,” He says. “I’m taking you home.” 

“Jackass,” Jason mumbles, under his breath. Tim doesn’t look but he can feel how hard Jason is staring, the strength with which he’s clenching his fists at his side like he does when he’s trying too hard to be something Bruce wants. 

Tim doesn’t look. 

“Fine. You’re probably right.” He pauses. “My parents aren’t home -- they’re on one of their trips to South America, so they probably won’t be back for a while. I’ve got a maid who stays with me, and she’ll probably be worried by now since it’s past curfew. ” 

Tim can feel the way the air lightens when Jason’s fists unclench, when the snarl becomes the snort of a laugh. Bruce’s jaw doesn’t tick but it’s a very near thing as he wavers on what to do. Alfred and Dick exchange a look over his shoulder, smug as Jason seems to be. That’s when Tim knows that he’s bought himself another couple of days to convince him, if nothing else. 

“Get in the car,” Bruce says, again. “You can stay at the manor until your parents get home.”

“‘Get in the car’, Robin?” Tim says, hopeful and bright and just enough to push his luck. 

But Bruce is already turned around, helping Alfred shoulder the weight of Dick’s injury. 

 

\-- 

 

The manor is large and quiet and mostly empty. When Alfred leads Tim into one of the guest rooms, he feels the weight of all that emptiness right on his chest, something hard and familiar. 

It’s not the same, though. Not with Jason here. 

Tim watches as Jason paces, pausing to stretch or fiddle with one of the many expensive looking baubles on the bookshelf. He thinks he could trace that nervous energy where it hangs on the line of his back, follow one single finger right down the middle of it in jittering zig-zags. Instead, he settles his away bag gently on the bed, something to occupy his hands with. Jason doesn’t look at him, not even once, and Tim thinks of that cold, empty feeling in his chest and how wrong Jason’s case in the cave felt in a house it never belonged. 

He wills himself to speak into the silence, to be brave.

“He’s going to be okay, Jason.” He says it as surely as he can, because speaking it makes it more sturdy, gives weight to the potential. “I promise.” 

_ I’ll watch after him for you,  _ isn’t something he  _ can  _ promise, but with Alfred and Dick’s help, he’ll try, and pushing that into the undertones of what he’s trying to relay can’t hurt. 

Jason just turns to look at him in that hard, chilling way he does that Tim never quite knows how to react to. It’s like he’s seeped in something so far within himself that it closes him off to everything else.

Tim moves to the end of the bed, and reaches out, fingers not quite breaching Jason’s space but offering, asking. Jason’s eyes fill with something lighter, like surprise, and Tim closes the space, leaning forward to brush two fingers across his arm, up high. And then, with the full force of his grip, he holds onto it like a tether. 

“Jason, I promise we’ll make things right.”

There’s a moment of fragile silence where Jason looks at Tim like he’s waiting for his gaze to break, like he’s waiting for the bullshit of it, the tell of the bluff. Tim knows the feeling, so he hangs on as tight as he can, gaze just as hard. Finally, Jason exhales, and Tim offers him a smile. 

Jason bodies him over to make room on the bed where they’ll lie and talk about nothing for hours, hours. Around 4AM, Jason looks at Tim in the dark, face half-illuminated by where the moon hangs in the window. It’s a serious look again, but Jason is smiling.

“You know, I wish--” That nervous energy, different, now, than before, paired with the exact moment where Jason’s lips part in thought-- Tim wants to trace it with his fingers, to photograph it, to hold it tight. “I wish I’d met you before.” 

Tim wants to keep it forever, something to put in a box on that shelf in his mind when he needs something to pull him up out of the silence, the emptiness on his chest. He doesn’t know how to say that, how to articulate it. Maybe it’s a secret, and maybe it’d lose power. Tim knows about secrets, and so he just says,

“Yeah, Jason, me too.” 

 

\--

 

It finally happened. It happened to Bruce and to Dick and to Jason, and now, to Tim.

There’s tragedy in this story. Maybe he was stupid to think he would escape the fate of it just by dipping a foot in. 

His mother is dead. His father may never walk again. 

“I’m sorry,” Bruce says, finally looking at him with honesty in his eyes--  like maybe Bruce finally sees him, now that’s lost someone, too. 

Tim wants to tear that thought from where it grew, wants to cram his fingers inside his mind and take it out. Heroes are people, Tim thinks. You can’t fill them with ideas just because you want it to be true. Bruce Wayne is a human, and this story is real life. 

_ How can I do this? I’m not a hero, I’m just-- _

_ Is this what I have to give? _

He looks at the case, lingers in the thin streaks of light that the cave offers while Bruce hangs in the shadows, silent and waiting. 

He thinks of Jason, of his promise, of a hero’s strength. 

Then he looks at Bruce.

“Tell me what I can do to help.”

 

\--

 

Stephanie Brown is-- realistically, more than Tim can handle. 

Technical, realistic. That’s what he has to be to function. That’s where his strength comes from: logic and how much he can trust what’s in his head, how effectively he can separate fact from fiction. Nobody should be able to compromise that. 

Stephanie Brown isn’t technical  _ or  _ realistic. She’s beautiful and alive, full of passion and brightness. She reminds Tim so much of-- 

“So, that Spoiler chick, huh? She’s cute.” Jason’s got a smile on his face as wide as anything, smug and knowing. 

He’s taken to spending less and less time around Tim in mundane situations. Jason likes school, even when it bores Tim to death. He’ll sit in on classes, hanging over Tim’s shoulder for Hamlet discussions, but disappear in the schoolyard until patrol, and sometimes even then, on particularly quiet nights, Tim will look over and Jason will be gone like he was never there at all. Tim makes sure Jason still knows he’s wanted around as often as possible, but whenever he brings it up, Jason just shrugs-- “I’ve got things to do, you’ve got things to do.” Then he’ll make some joke about girls and books and that’ll be the end of it. 

He’s not sure when that changed, but he tries not to think too hard about it. Jason is a constant in his life just like being Robin and being Tim Drake and his hoard of secrets. He balances them all as well as he can with his plans and lines drawn in the sand, separating each of them into individual categories in his head. 

Tim can’t fit Stephanie Brown in. 

“What’s the deal there?” 

“She’s the daughter of a criminal,” He mutters in reply to Jason, a flush already pooling high on his cheeks. 

Jason huffs up, shoulders broad as he crosses his arms and makes himself as big as he can like he does whenever he gets offended by something. “So am I, jackass. And you seemed to like her well enough the other night, so what gives?”

The kiss. It was impulsive, careless. Tim Drake is one category and Robin is another and in one there is Ariana and in the other there is Stephanie and-- Jason, somewhere off to the side. Tim slides a hand over his face, sinking into his Algebra textbook. “Shouldn’t have happened.” 

Jason pulls the book out from underneath his face, folding it underneath his arm. “You’re such a weirdo about this kinda shit. You like her. She likes you. Don’t make it complicated.”

This close, Tim thinks:  _ I like you.  _ It’s dazed and stupid and a thought he’s been having with increasing frequency lately. Another problem to deal with, but lower on the priority list. Tim can’t lose Jason, and being in love with a ghost is--

Is--

God, it’s so stupid to even think about. 

“I need to study.” He says, making a grab for the book, but Jason’s taller, still, and lifts it above his head with a grin. Tim hates that he grins, too, rolling his eyes with a huff.

“As  _ if _ , you liar. You don’t ever study.” Jason chuckles, blowing a bubble with Tim’s spearmint gum and falling back onto Tim’s bed without an inkling of grace or poise. “Go do whatever nerdy stuff it is you do before patrol and I’ll take your algebra practice test.” 

He has no room for any of them, but they’re all here anyway, each vying for a piece of his heart.

 

\-- 

 

There are days where it feels less like a role he’s filling and far more like Robin is tying itself to who he is. Tim counts the tethers he has in his life and tries not to add them into a math equation where he measures his worth as Tim Drake vs. his worth as Robin. He stops looking for reasons to tell himself that he’s not a hero, that he’s just someone trying to do the right thing. It makes putting the suit on feel easier, even if the shoulders still feel too stiff, too broad. 

_ It’s not the suit that makes you a hero,  _ Dick had told him once. 

Dick helps more than he knows. With Bruce, with-- everything. Out of all of them, Dick is the brightest, the best at putting on a face where it matters. He’s the brother Tim never had, making himself a point that Tim can find his way back to when he needs something that isn’t the cave, the suit, all the doubts and secrets. 

Jason is never around when Dick is. Tim doesn’t ask, but he doesn’t think he has to. Every time Dick steps into the batcave to ruffle Tim’s hair or ask him how his day was is a time that he wasn’t there for Jason, for the loneliness Jason must’ve felt. Tim can carry it, but he doesn’t have to carry it alone. Jason did. 

Dick knows it, too. Tim can see it written on his face-- can read Dick just like he can read Jason. 

“Do you ever think about him?” Tim asks one day. “The other Robin?” 

“Oh.” Dick says, like the wind has been knocked out of him. He recovers quickly, because one of the things Tim has learned about Dick is that he always lands on his feet. His eyes are unreadable behind the domino, but Tim thinks he has some idea what they might look like without it. “Sometimes.”

Tim’s seen the tapes on the computer in the cave, the files. 

Dick  _ had  _ killed the Joker. Fists red with blood and face streaked with fury and hurt, Dick had killed him-- his heart stopped. For Jason and for Barbara. Tim’s not sure Dick could’ve lived with the consequence of it if he hadn’t come back, some ugly roach of a man, but in the moment, it hadn’t mattered enough to stop him.

Dick  _ killed the Joker _ , so to Tim, it doesn’t matter that he made mistakes before-- it matters that he cares and wants to fix it. If the two of them could talk, Jason would see and Dick would see the way Tim does. 

He’s getting tired of keeping people’s secrets. 

“Me too.” Tim says, finally. “All the time.”

 

\-- 

 

Sometimes he thinks Stephanie knows him better than anyone. Better than Dick, Bruce, or even Jason. As many times as he’s lied to her, disappointed her-- he thinks she knows him better than anyone. 

When he breaks it off with Ariana, Stephanie kisses him. It’s not their first, or even their second, but this time, she pauses. Hand on his shoulder, she pulls back and looks at him hard, just like--

“What’s wrong?” She says. Demands, more like, because she’s brash and fearless. “Is it-- It’s not me, right?” 

Tim wants to kiss her again, because he does think he could fall in love with her, if situations were different. He thinks he already  _ is  _ a little bit in love with her, truth be told. It’s far more realistic than he ever wanted it to be, far more complicated, but that’s not the problem. It never was. 

He shakes his head. 

“Ariana?”

He shakes his head again, and she raises an eyebrow.

“Not Ariana but someone else.” It’s not a question. 

They sit in silence for a moment, and Steph leans back, presses both palms to the backs of her eyes. “Fuck,” She says. “I really liked you. I  _ do  _ really like you.”

He wants to tell her that he really likes her, too, but that’d be wrong in more ways than he can count. In more ways than one. Instead, he closes his eyes tight as he can manage, and says, quiet, “Steph, you’re my best friend.” 

Steph looks at him and he can feel the pain where she’s bleeding it, a sad sort of smile on her face. She leans forward so suddenly to press a kiss to his forehead, hard and fierce, both hands on his face. “Love you, okay?” 

Tim knows she means it.

He does, too.

 

\--

 

In a lot of ways, Tim still doesn’t consider himself brave. He goes out of his way to avoid going back home, runs himself ragged on the streets until Oracle pings his earpiece and tells him that if he doesn’t go home, she’ll call in backup and  _ drag  _ him home, one way or the other. 

_ Bruce might let you run around on the streets until it gets you killed, little bird, but don’t forget that I’m always watching. _

It shouldn’t be a comforting thought, but Tim trusts Barbara. 

When Tim gets back to his room-- in through the window, Dad downstairs snoring loudly-- he can barely make it out of his costume before he hits the bed. If his mind was a computer, it’d be whirring and huffing, protesting a program it can’t run while its system is overheating. The city is still in shatters from the earthquake and the uprise in criminal activity that spurred up in the wake of it. Robin should be out there. Robin should be helping. Tim hasn’t seen Jason in days, and Bruce looks even worse for wear than Tim. 

Despite it all, sleep comes without warning, caring little for the war in Tim’s head. 

Around three, Tim wakes with a start, groggy, immediately going for the escrima stick he keeps underneath his pillow. 

Jason’s in the corner of Tim’s room, slung over a desk chair like he never belonged anywhere else. There’s a cigarette in his mouth-- hanging oddly, the smoke blooming visibly within his chest when he inhales. It’s a curious sort of sight, and one that cools the blood in Tim’s veins.

Tim’s seen him smoke before-- on patrols when he thought Bruce wasn’t looking-- but not since coming back. Doesn’t mean he hasn’t done it-- he always smells of nicotine, even now. 

Tim watches, silent, lowering the weapon. Maybe it’s selfish to hope Jason speaks first, but Tim thinks of it like self-preservation. There’s too much unknown for Tim to work this into a variable where he can realistically determine what Jason’s seen, what he knows. Would it even matter?  

“You’re creeping me out.” He says, finally, letting out a breath. “How long have you been there?” 

Jason huffs, rolls his eyes, stubbing the cigarette out by closing a fist around it. If there’s a burn, if there’s any pain, Jason doesn’t let on like it matters. Tim knows a show when he sees one, but he doesn’t call Jason’s bluff. Not yet. 

“You’re the creepy one, you little stalker.” It’s the kind of petulance that Tim’s come to expect from Jason in these situations, lashing out because it’s easier than dealing with the hurt. Tim moves to the edge of the bed, folding his hands in his lap. 

“How’d it go with Steph?” Jason asks, finally.

Tim levels his gaze with Jason’s own, searching one. “I told her how I felt.” 

“You mean you blew her off. And for fucking what?” Jason stands, swallowing the space instantly. “Don’t be stupid, Tim, come on. Stephanie is--” 

“Alive?” Tim offers, eyebrows raised. 

Jason stares, and Tim stares back. 

“Don’t be stupid.” Jason says, like he’s trying to convince himself. He drops the cigarette butt onto Tim’s carpet, just ash at this point. “Some days I’m not even sure any of this is real. Coming back only to haunt the kid who takes over my life? It’s-- jesus.” 

He’s fidgeting, wringing in his hands -- moving inside his skin like a bull in a china shop, like nothing is right. “I lose time. I leave and I don’t know where I go, I can’t remember. I walk through walls, through entire buildings, through fucking people-- no one knows, not any fucking one of them. Worst of all? When I look down at my skin, I can see every bruise that son of a bitch made on me, every fucking bone he broke, and Bruce, he-- he doesn’t even  _ care _ . None of them care, and none of them are looking. You’re the only one who knows, the  _ only one _ who gives a shit, and you’re living my life. How can you--” His voice dips off like water falling over the edge of a cliff, like desperation. 

Tim knows what it means to be invisible, to be so full of secrets that it keeps you veiled and isolated. This is his story, now, but it’s Jason’s too, and Tim will never forget that. He pulls himself off the bed and wraps his arms around Jason, tight as they’ll go. It’s awkward; there’s a difference in height, and Jason’s stiff with resentment, but it’s  _ right _ . It’s right and it’s real, no matter what.

“You don’t even know me.” Jason says, barely audible, a dust of warm breath across Tim’s neck. 

_ How could this not be real? _ Tim thinks.  _ How could he not know? _

“I know you. I’ve known you since I was 12.” Tim says, like it’s the easiest thing in the world. “And I don’t know what I’d do without you now.” 

Jason makes an indefinable sound, something hurt, something angry, something overwhelmed, something emptying. He pools into Tim’s weight like he’s letting go, forehead falling onto Tim’s shoulder.

He breathes.

Tim breathes.

Tim holds him until both of their breathing evens out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whew! this took much longer than intended, i apologize-- life gets in the way, yadda yadda. those of you that have been leaving kudos/comments mean everything to me, so thanks so much! i might have to squeeze in one extra chapter more than originally intended, but we'll see. update should be next week!


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